In early March, Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics posted on social media platform X that space junk from the International Space Station "reentered" the Earth's atmosphere between "Cancun and Cuba."
The EP-9 equipment pallet reentered at 1929 UTC over the Gulf of Mexico between Cancun and Cuba. This was witih the previous prediction window but a little to the northeast of the 'most likely' part of the path. A couple minutes later reentry and it would have reached Ft Myers
— Jonathan McDowell (@planet4589) March 8, 2024
Days later, an X user named "Alejandro Otero" said some of that space junk "tore through the roof and went thru 2 floors" of his Naples, Florida home.
Hello. Looks like one of those pieces missed Ft Myers and landed in my house in Naples.
— Alejandro Otero (@Alejandro0tero) March 15, 2024
Tore through the roof and went thru 2 floors. Almost his my son.
Can you please assist with getting NASA to connect with me? I’ve left messages and emails without a response. pic.twitter.com/Yi29f3EwyV
Local media outlet WINK News spoke with Otero about what he believes is space junk that damaged his home:
"It was a tremendous sound. It almost hit my son. He was two rooms over and heard it all," said Alejandro Otero.
Alejandro told WINK News he was on vacation when his son called.
"Something ripped through the house and then made a big hole on the floor and on the ceiling," said Alejandro. "When we heard that, we were like, impossible, and then immediately I thought a meteorite."
They came home early from their trip and found that an apparent man-made cylindrical-shaped object weighing nearly two pounds ripped through the ceiling and tore through the floor.
Alejandro believes it could have come from space.
"It used to have a cylindrical shape, and you can tell by the shape of the top that it traveled in this direction through the atmosphere. Whatever you burned, created in this burn and melted the metal over in this direction," said Alejandro.
Wherever it came from, it scared the Otero family.
"I was shaking. I was completely in disbelief. What are the chances of something landing on my house with such force to cause so much damage," Alejandro said. "I'm super grateful that nobody got hurt."
The incident sparked interest with the tech blog website Ars Technica, which spoke with NASA spokesperson Josh Finch. He said NASA's Kennedy Space Center will analyze the object "as soon as possible to determine its origin."
"It gets more interesting if this material is discovered to be not originally from the United States," Michelle Hanlon, executive director of the Center for Air and Space Law at the University of Mississippi, told Ars.
Hanlon added: "If it is a human-made space object which was launched into space by another country, which caused damage on Earth, that country would be absolutely liable to the homeowner for the damage caused."
